Market on Tour – Open Call for the Berlin Performing Arts Market 2025

The second edition of the Berlin Performing Arts Market starts on May 15, 2025! This year, the focus has been placed on knowledge, resources and ideas, in order to open up new national and international networking opportunities for the members of Berlin’s independent performing arts community.

Together with its guests, the Performing Arts Market will visit different performance venues as well as exciting stations of Berlin’s independent performing arts community. One part of the program is the presentation of artistic works, for which we invite Berlin artists and groups to apply! 

The Performing Arts Market will take place at the same time as the schedule of events for the IETM Plenary Meeting, which is inviting international artists and culture makers to Berlin from May 15 to 17. In this context, we are offering Berlin-based artists and producers with the opportunity of presenting themselves and their work to national and international visiting industry professionals, to enter into contact with curators, presenters and multipliers in order to possibly arrange guest performances, residences or coproductions as well as to sustainably expand their networks.

At the same time, we are inviting all members of the independent performing arts community – from curators to presenters all the way to the operators of performance venues and producers – to apply in response to the Open Call Introducing Berlin's Independent Performing Arts Community at IETM. We are looking for non-artistic contributions that offer insights into the Berlin scene, such as thematic talks, workshops, walks, guided tours, picnics with artists or your teams – preferably in cooperation with other participants

Before the expiration of the application deadline, we are offering everyone who is interested and has questions about the open call "Market on Tour" to share them with us in a digital Q&A session. Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 11:00 am. In order to sign up for the Q&A session or to ask any additional questions, we ask you to send to an email to: kris.bernhardt [at] pap-berlin.de ()

Application criteria – Open Call "Market on Tour"

What Are We Looking For?

• Presentations of the artistic work of the members of Berlin’s independent performing arts community working in a variety of disciplines and that should not exceed a length of 5-7 minutes. The presentation can be traditional pitch formats or innovative formats.
• The presentations should be able to be realized with very simple technical requirements. Basic equipment for lighting, sound and projections will be available. The preparation time should not exceed a length of three minutes for the actual presentations.
• Language: English (insofar as language is used)

Prerequisites for Participation / Who Can Apply?

• Artists or groups working in the independent performing arts whose work is based in Berlin.
• The participating artists or groups must have a portfolio of at least one current production that can go on tour at the time of the Berlin Performing Arts Market and this production must have already been presented in Berlin and have been premiered within the last two years. We recommend that the productions do not exceed a price of € 10,000 for a guest performance.
• The participating artists or groups must have already made at least one guest performance outside of Berlin in their previous work.
• In order to take part in the Berlin Performing Arts Market, it is necessary to submit video material of tourable production(s), the internet presence of the artist or group, promotional material, et cetera as described in What Has To Be Submitted? This material must be submitted together with the application.
• Productions that have been created as part of one’s course of study cannot be taken into consideration.
• In order to be on time, please send your complete application by February 23, 2025 to: messe [at] pap-berlin.de
  (If you are unable to comply with the submission deadline due to disability, chronic illness or other important reason, a brief statement of interest is sufficient. In these cases, the application can be submitted at a later date).
   

What Has To Be Submitted?

• Information about the artist or group submitting
  • Name of the artist or group
  • A brief description of the artist or group (max. 600 characters)
  • A brief description of artist’s or group’s work (points of focus/aesthetics/et cetera, max. 600 characters)
  • A contact person with an email address and telephone number
  • If applicable, links to the website/social media accounts of the artist or group
  • Guest performance price of the production (recommendation: not more than € 10,000)
  • If applicable, a list with interests for international and national cooperations

• A concept for a presentation at the 2025 Berlin Performing Arts Market (maximum 1 DIN A4 page). The following information should be included in the concept:
  • A precise description of the form of presentation
  • The accessibility of the language (is there a translation?)
  • Duration
  • Technical needs
  • If applicable, space needed
• Promotional material about the artist’s or group’s work
  • Flyer / posters in digital form
  • Links to video (shorter formats such as trailers are preferred / also video documentation if applicable)

Formalities

• Please send all documents together as a single PDF file
• Language: German or English
• Please do not send any emails that are larger than 5 MB in size
   

Basic Conditions / What We Can Offer:

• Submitting applications and participation are free of charge.
• No fee is offered.
• A preparation workshop will be held for all selected artists or groups before the Berlin Performing Arts Market.
• Basic technical equipment (light, sound, projector) will be available for the presentations. What’s more, information tables will be made available to all selected artists or groups in addition to the presentation upon which they can exhibit their own work and have conversations with potential partners.
• The Berlin Performing Arts Program will design the cooperations with a variety of networks and will also be responsible for the general coordination of the event.

Additional Information

• The goal of this open call is to present the diversity of Berlin’s independent performing arts community in all of its different areas and its various aesthetics, from solo performers to groups and collectives. In doing so, we sincerely hope to be able to take as many applications into consideration as possible, but will not be able to decide until after looking at the applications that we receive on February 23, 2025 what will be possible in terms of the chronological and spatial parameters of the Market. For everyone that is not selected, we will do our best within the scope of our possibilities to offer additional forms of exchange.

• Before the expiration of the application deadline, we are offering a digital information session on Wednesday, February 12 at 11:00 am for all interested parties who have questions about the application. Please send your registration and any further questions via email to: kris.bernhardt [at] pap-berlin.de
• The selected artists or groups will receive a notification regarding their selection by the middle of March.